English 2.0

Contraction: Neckwear accessories

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:59:45 -0800

English 1.x: Neckwear accessories
English 2.0: Neckcessories

Example: “I need to buy a tie clip; do you know of a store that sells neckcessories?”

There has been a lot of discussion about this one, so this should be considered an early beta. There’s been some heated debate between two factions who favor “Neckcessories” and “Accnecksories”, and we’re going to refer it to the executive committee for a final decision. If we stick with “Neckcessories”, there will be a smaller subcommittee meeting to decide among several spelling variants (“neckessories”, “neckcessories”, “nackcessories”).

Contraction: Compelling Melancholy

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:35:00 -0800

English 1.x: Compelling melancholy
English 2.0: Compellancholy

Example: “Upgraded to Acela fake first class. Compellancholy of NYC in the rain much easier to enjoy knowing you will make it out.” (Wonkette via Twitter)

Comment: A great example of synergy here. We were able to repurpose some of the technology developed for “compel-o-vision” and use it here. This saves money and makes the architecture a lot simpler.

Contraction: half an afternoon

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:05:13 -0700

English 1.x: half an afternoon
English 2.0: halfternoon

Example: “My boss is giving me a halfternoon per week off so I can go ride my bike.”

Contraction: drawing opportunities

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:03:00 -0700

English 1.x: drawing opportunities
English 2.0: drawpportunities

Example: “I brought my pad and pencils to the meeting because I thought there might be some drawpportunities.”

Sponsored Message: The next time you have drawpportunities, consider a Wacom Penabled® device! For more information, go to www.wacom.com.

Waelcom!

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:41:00 -0700

Over the next several months we are going to be announcing a series of sponsorship and consulting partnerships with major national and international organizations. These partnerships provide an amazing opportunity for us to do real-world AES research while generating much-needed funding for the Institute.

We’re thrilled to announce our first of these partnerships, with pen computing pioneer Wacom. We’ve been working with them for several months on their Penabled® (“pen enabled”) campaign, and we’re finally able to talk about it here. We’re excited to have them on board, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership.

Wacom Penabled® Technology

One of the earliest known examples of proto-English 2.0: a...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:02:00 -0700

One of the earliest known examples of proto-English 2.0: a contraction of “laundry” and “dryteria”, both common words of the time.

Contraction: Compelling Television

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:18:25 -0700

English 1.0: Compelling Television
English 1.9 SP1: Compellivision
English 2.0: Compel-o-vision

Example: Man… Battlestar, The Wire, Rome, The Shield… this is the golden age of compel-o-vision.

Many or One, Continued: More Cars

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:16:00 -0700

We got a lot of letters about our Lexus entry the other day - there seem to be a lot of car buffs out there in the AES world!

Most people were curious about the plural of their particular make of car. I’m sorry to say that we don’t have an exhaustive list yet - we hope to publish one this fall as a joint effort with our friends at Consumer Reports for their fall auto issue. I can tell you that most of them use fairly standard English 2.0 technology, so they’re not unusual (Toyotas = Toysota, Chevrolets = Chevroslet, etc.) However, there were two special ones I wanted to mention that relate directly to yesterday’s “Many or One” post.

We have long been interested in singularization, it being a mathematical reduction of our work on pluralization. But it’s not as easy as it looks, and we didn’t make any great strides in that area until we started exploring car plurals. When we turned our pluralization instruments on two popular brands of car - Audi and Honda - our researchers were astonished to find that they were already plural!

At first we were sure that we had the instruments calibrated wrong; we even sent a few back to the factory for tuning. But the numbers don’t lie, as they say. We don’t know how it developed, but these two plural nouns put out the signature of a singular noun. This discovery required us to develop new techniques for identifying these “faux plurals” (or “fplursauxl” as we refer to them in Advanced E2 notation), and it led to many of the English 2.0 singularization advancements that we talked about yesterday.

For the record, here are the details on “Audi” and “Honda”. As you can imagine, these are now our two favorite kinds of car!

English 1.x Plural: Audis
English 1.x Singular: Audi
English 2.0 Plural: Audi
English 2.0 Singular: Aud (or “Audon” - still under review)

Example: Bill just bought a new Aud A3 to go with his wife’s Aud S4. Now they have two Audi.

English 1.x Plural: Hondas
English 1.x Singular: Honda
English 2.0 Plural: Honda
English 2.0 Singular: Hond

Example: I love my HondAccord*, so I’m not surprised that five of the Consumer Reports Top Ten cars are Honda.

We don’t have the final numbers, but we think that similar improvements can be made on Acura, Hond’s sister brand in the US (e.g., “I have an Acur.”/”He has two Acura.”)

* Note the contraction opportunities with this new singularization technique.

Many or One?

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:29:36 -0700

English 1.x is filled with words that fail to convey their form as either singular or plural: Milk, scissors, rice, and many others. This leads to confusion and suffering. Sure, you have milk, but how many? One? Four million? We just don’t know.

Fortunately, advances here at the institute will finally put an end to this problem.

English 1.x: milk
English 2.0 Plural: milkken
English 2.0 Singular: milk
(see also: silk)

English 1.x: rice
English 2.0 Plural: rice
English 2.0 Singular: rouse
(see also: ice)

English 1.x: scissors
English 2.0 Plural: scissorii
English 2.0 Singular: scissors
(see also: trousers, britches)

English 1.x: smithereens
English 2.0 Plural: smitheren
English 2.0 Singular: smithereen
(see also: dungarees)

Contraction: "Female Bee"

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:56:53 -0700

English 1.x: female bee
English 2.0: beemale

Example: “Beemales also collect the pollen to feed to their larvae.” (Wikipedia)

Note: The International Bee Research Association has filed Form 571G/A to put this entry under review, citing the fact that many scientists refer to male bees as “bee males”. When females are referred to as “beemales”, there could be confusion, as the only effective difference would be the length and quality of the pause between words. A hearing on the matter has been scheduled. This term will go out in the initial English 2.0 release and will be corrected, if necessary, in a subsequent service pack.

See also: “Bee research”/”beesearch”.

Plural: "Lexus"

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:38:10 -0700

English 1.x: Lexuses
English 2.0: Lexesus

Example: I don’t know about you, but I like the look of the new Lexesus.

Plural: "Mashup"

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:32:00 -0700

English 1.x: mashups
English 2.0: mashes up

Example: Have you seen Bus Monster? That’s one of my favorite mashes up!”
Example: I am down with the following mashes: up, monster, and 4077th.

Plural: "Sucker MC"

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:07:00 -0700

English 1.0: Sucker MCs
English 1.9 SP1: Sucker MsC
English 2.0: Suckers, MC

Example: “It takes a lot to entertain, and Suckers, MC can be a pain.” (Run-DMC)
Example: “I am fed up with the following suckers: MC, punch, octopus.”

Behind The Plural: "abacus"

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:40:00 -0700

I was going to just post this word without comment, but I thought it provided a good example of the power of our newer English 2.0 techniques.

Your standard English 1.x dictionary will tell you that the plural of “abacus” is either “abaci” or “abacuses”. It will probably also tell you that the word is of Middle English origin, derived from Latin, Greek, and possibly Hebrew roots.

But with our more sophisticated technology, we can find that the word is actually of Irish origin, and that the true English 2.0 plural is “absacus”, from the Gaelic “abs o’cus” (literally: “racks of counting”).

It is truly exciting to think of what new discoveries await us now that we are armed with such amazing tools. It’s a great time to be an etymological scientist!

Welcome to our Blog!

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:56:00 -0700

Hello! My name is Dr. Scott Dierdorf, one of the directors of the Institute for Applied Etymological Sciences. Now that we’ve got things up and running, I wanted to tell you what you can expect to see on this Internet site.

About Us

You probably already know a bit about us, but I’ll give some background to fill in those who are new to our corner of the world. We are the third largest etymological research institute in the country, with seven full-time researchers and 22 graduate students. The Institute is led by myself and my colleagues, Dr. John Harper and Dr. Matt Durasoff. We are an independent, self-funded institute with our own endowment, but we are affiliated with the University of Washington in Seattle. They are a donor, and they provide us with office space and lab facilities. In exchange, we provide research opportunities for UW graduate students and teach some advanced courses in applied etymological science for UW students and faculty.

About This Blog

We hope to use this site to keep people up to date on the latest developments in the world of applied etymological science (AES), keep people updated on news about the Institute, and provide a peek “behind the scenes” into some of our research. The primary authors will be myself and Dr. Harper, but we may have some guest authors now and then to spice things up a bit. =-)

As you know, there is so much news in the world of AES that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it all. We hope that this blog can become a kind of “one-stop shop” to help you stay current with all of the latest information. Please bookmark us and check back often!

Contraction: Drinking Zima

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:15:00 -0700

English 1.x: drinking Zima
English 2.0: Zimbibing

Example: “I went out with the biz dev guys last night, and we were Zimbibing ‘til the break of dawn!”

Plural: Barack Obama

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:47:00 -0700

English 1.x: Barack Obamas
English 2.0: Barack Obamen

Example: “This election has seen a new breed of candidate: your Johns McCain, your Hillaries Clinton, your Barack Obamen.”